Masters of repair iFixit have disassembled one of the first third-gen iPads …

The teardown experts from iFixit flew halfway around the world to be there when March 16 rolled past the International Date Line into Australia. iFixit's team was the first in line to buy an iPad at a Telstra store in Melbourne, and set immediately to disassembling the device to poke at its innards. Unsurprisingly, most of the inside is occupied by a massive 42.5Whr battery.

Prying off the glass cover and Retina screen revealed the part numbers for the display panel. It appears to be made by Samsung, with part numbers matching a pattern used for previous Samsung panels. Rumors had suggested that LG and Sharp were also considered as suppliers for the iPad 3's 9.7" 2048x1536 pixel display, though it seems that Samsung is the only supplier pumping out enough volume for Apple at launch.

"LG and Sharp are likely to pick up volume production soon, in April," IHS iSuppli analyst Vinita Jakhanwal told Wired on Wednesday.

iFixit's teardown also double-confirmed that the iPad 3 comes with 1GB of RAM. Two 512MB Elpida LP DDR2 packages are soldered on the logic board underneath the A5X processor.

Other chips include a Broadcom 802.11n-compatible Wi-Fi chip with Bluetooth 4.0 support as well as an FM transceiver, an Apple-branded power management IC, Toshiba-made NAND flash, and a Qualcomm MDM9600 baseband.

The Qualcomm MDM9600 is a first-generation combination LTE, HSPA, and EV-DO baseband chip, and we expected to see the second-gen MDM9615, which is supposed to be smaller and more power efficient. Now, however, it seems those chips are not available in iPad-level volumes from Qualcomm. We think the MDM9615 is likely to appear later this year if Apple ships an LTE-compatible iPhone, however.

Because of the increased battery draw of the MDM9600 and Retina display, Apple had to significantly increase the iPad's battery capacity. The original iPad had a 24.8Whr battery, and Apple increased that slightly to 25Whr in the iPad 2 while shaving off nearly 5mm of thickness. Though the iPad 3 is just 0.6mm thicker than the iPad 2, it boasts a 42.5Whr battery—an impressive 70 percent capacity improvement.

The revised three-cell design appears to be slightly larger than the battery in the iPad 2—each measures about 125 x 65 x 4 mm, according to iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens. The cells in the iPad 2 measure 108 x 63 x 2.7mm, so the iPad 3 battery is actually about 70 percent larger. Earlier speculation suggested that Apple had somehow significantly improved on the power density of the cells, but our calculations show otherwise. Apple was just able to more efficiently pack in the components—and increase the overall device thickness ever so slightly—to make the battery larger.

Be sure to head over to iFixit to get a closer look at how Apple jammed all the iPad's hardware into its aluminum unibody shell.

Forget how long the battery last, Apple is usually very accurate with their estimated times. But how about about someone reporting on how long it will take to recharge this size battery. As I see it this is the only drawback on increase battery capacity. Also most battery ratings are with screen brightness at 50-60%. So people are going to have these high resolution panels but with brightness turned down your not going to get the same affect.

Forget how long the battery last, Apple is usually very accurate with their estimated times. But how about about someone reporting on how long it will take to recharge this size battery. As I see it this is the only drawback on increase battery capacity. Also most battery ratings are with screen brightness at 50-60%. So people are going to have these high resolution panels but with brightness turned down your not going to get the same affect.

The entire battery itself is only a little bit larger. The cells INSIDE the battery are 70% larger. They were able to take those 3 cells and place them closer together, thus making the entirety of the battery only a little thicker.

Do the math (w*h*d). The volume has increased by 70%.

And there are no "cells" inside the batteries. Each of the three is a custom-formed and shaped LiPo battery. They're not like old computer batteries where the "battery" was a plastic shell wrapped around a set of rechargeable AAs.